[quote]pushharder wrote:
[quote]Otep wrote:
I would be happier with the situation if the owners and managers of restaurants were responsible for paying the full wage of their employees.[/quote]
And let’s face it…your happiness is paramount.[quote]
Alternatively, I think it’d be cool if I could engage in financial blackmail with the parents of my students, for example, giving the students inaccurate or badly mangled tutelage if their parents didn’t tip me enough to educate the youngsters properly.[/quote]
Then again, if you’re foolish enough to view tipping as nothing more than financial blackmail I have a feeling you’re already predisposed to giving your students inaccurate or badly mangled tutelage.[/quote]
I can see why you wouldn’t place a high value on my happiness… but I can’t see why you’d think I do the same.
I do think of tipping as financial blackmail. For me, tipping is not a value-adding service. When I go out to eat, I go out TO EAT. Not to be waited on. Let me buy a drink, I’ll get my own refills, my own chips and salsa, and if you let me know when my order is ready, I’ll get it myself. No problem. I don’t see a reason to pay an extra two to six dollars to someone else so I can avoid some GPP. I know some people like to feel pampered, and that’s okay. That’s not me.
As a result, I tend to go to places where there aren’t servers. When I order pizza, I pick it up. I eat at Chachos a good bit. I’m not wasting waiters’ time, they’re not wasting my money, everyones happy.
But some places serve really good food that, for some reason, I can’t seem to purchase without the waiter getting in the way. And if I consume the food at this place on a regular basis, if I do not tip in a manner sufficient with the wait-staff’s ego, they have within their power the ability to do horrible things to my food. It’d be nice to know the requisite surcharge to insure the kitchen staff’s good work gets to my table unmolested. But its not listed anywhere on the menu. I have to infer it based on the wait-staff’s mood, temperament, and how much they seem to think they’re worth. I see this as an inefficient system.
I’m in favor of increasing the transparency of the transaction I’m making with the business owner. I think a simple thing to do that would be if they raised their prices (probably to what the meals usually cost including tip) and paid the servers their wages, rather than the responsibility lying with me as a consumer to possibly misjudge the value of some unskilled labor and end up with the whole enchilada tits up.
Really Push, I’m surprised you hate transparent, efficient markets. I bet you kick puppies, too, while reading Dreams from My Father.
